


World Without End

by kitestringer



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-25
Updated: 2010-04-25
Packaged: 2017-10-09 03:51:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/82718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitestringer/pseuds/kitestringer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus Lupin is devastated. Albus Dumbledore understands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	World Without End

**Author's Note:**

> Contains vague spoilers for _Deathly Hallows._
> 
> Originally posted in August of 2007 in the Nest of Spiders LJ community. Inspired by [this prompt](http://community.livejournal.com/nest_of_spiders/34883.html).

Remus sits alone, fingers clasped in a tight knot on his lap. He's wearing what are most probably his very best robes, though they're too small for him now, the sleeves falling inches short of his bony wrists. Albus watches him avoid the eyes of the rest of the Order as they pay their respects to those who made this peace possible—or perhaps he hardly notices their presence at all, surrounded as he is on all sides now by two silent coffins, the ghost of a friend without enough left to bury, torturous memories of a traitor.

Beside Remus, amidst the cloying hordes of flowers, there stands a table of photographs; he hasn't moved far from them since he arrived, his wounded eyes lingering over smiling, waving images of his friends, then clenching shut as though he's been slapped across the face when they see what no one else's do, the face that's been carefully excluded, the laughing grey eyes of the one person with whom he dared share everything. Albus has no need for Legilimency to know this, to know what Remus and Sirius were to each other. He'd might as well be looking in a long-ago mirror.

Shall Albus tell him what to expect in these coming nights? Awakening, drowning in darkness, groping for something to confirm that it was nothing but a terrible dream, that those you love still breathe and mumble and toss and turn in their beds. Long hours spent ransacking your memory for the signs you had missed or simply chosen to ignore, for signs that you perhaps ought to be forgiven, that _he_ ought to be forgiven. Despising yourself in ways you'd never known possible. Wondering whether you'll be able to let anyone touch you, ever again.

It could be months or years, it could be longer, and no love will never hold precisely the same meaning. You won't have even a photograph of him, because how _could_ you, how could you possibly justify having kept one, how could you bear to look at one? And yet he'll always be there, a wraith haunting the most secret reaches of your heart, and he'll come to you in your dreams, yes, where you're helpless against him, just as you always were—and when you awaken you'll feel his hands and his mouth on your skin, and no amount of shame will suffice to keep you from wishing you could have more.

One so young would no doubt find it strange (perhaps even distasteful) that his professor's ancient, sexless mind should still yield to such memories, but they remain indelible, painfully so. Their sharp edges fade, perhaps, but never disappear. Should Remus live to see his own hair grow white, he, too, might find that his knees buckle beneath the weight of a few notes of a particular song, the flavour of absinthe, the scent of soap infused with sandalwood and pine, the intervening decades only a trifling barrier between him and a man who will never leave him in peace.

Outside somewhere, a dog barks joyfully, oblivious to the heavy sorrow it's so blithely interrupting, and when Albus returns his attention to Remus he sees that he's blinking away tears, turning to hide his face. A memory unexpectedly brought to the surface, perhaps. One of what is sure to be so very many, chasing him doggedly throughout the rest of his life.

When Albus closes his eyes, he sees golden hair that spills soft and slow like honey between his fingers, and a smile that can make his heart stop with the sun-hot shock of its incandescence. _I know,_ he wishes he could tell Remus, the poor boy. _I know._


End file.
